Latest news with #Israeli
Toronto Star
an hour ago
- Politics
- Toronto Star
Mohammed Sinwar, head of Hamas' armed wing, has been killed, Netanyahu says
CAIRO (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Mohammed Sinwar, believed to be the head of Hamas' armed wing, has been killed, apparently confirming his death in a recent strike in the Gaza Strip. There was no confirmation from Hamas. Sinwar is the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who helped mastermind the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that started the Israel-Hamas war, and who was killed by Israeli forces in October 2024.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Israel prepares to call up 450,000 soldiers amid mounting toll on reservists and their families
The escalation of Israel's operations in Gaza has brought new upheaval for reservists and their families, as well as renewed resentment about haredi Orthodox Jews who avoid military service. Tzemach David Schloss has spent 290 days in the IDF reserves over the last 19 months — close to half of the time that has passed since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. He says the hardest part isn't just the danger of combat, but of what he experienced when he first came home. 'I didn't want to get too close to my wife or children because I was scared that any minute I'd be called up again,' he said. Soon, he was. 'My son was born during the war into my arms at home, and a week later I was back in the rubble of Gaza, where at any given moment you can get shot,' he said. 'I've probably spent more time in uniform than with my baby. That horrifies me,' Schloss added. 'This is a critical stage for bonding. He's been affected by this. I am, too. I feel like my fatherhood has been compromised.' Schloss says he'll continue to report for duty when ordered. But he voiced deep frustration with what he described as a broken system, one that issues sudden, months-long call-up orders while relying on a shrinking pool of reservists to carry the load. He is not alone. The global discourse about the war has focused on starvation and death in Gaza — concerns that have begun permeating Israeli discussions as well. But chief among Israelis' concerns, along with the suffering of the hostages held by Hamas, are the welfare of their husbands, fathers and sons off fighting, and sometimes dying, at the front. Now, the escalation of Israel's operations in Gaza has brought new upheaval for reservists and their families, as well as renewed resentment about haredi Orthodox Jews who avoid military service. On Monday, the Israeli government authorized calling up as many as 450,000 reservists over the next three months — more than were called up on Oct. 7, 2023, and the most at any time in Israel's history. When the first call-ups in support of an expanded offensive in Gaza went out last month — despite a decision made in November to cap reserve duty in 2025 at two and a half months — it was the seventh time being called up since Oct. 7 for some. 'I am aware of the weight of the mission, the responsibility, and the burden we place on you and your families,' Eyal Zamir, the military's chief of staff, told reservists after the orders went out. 'When we call you up, we do so with utmost reverence.' There are roughly 100,000 active-duty soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces, those in their mandatory conscription period — which lawmakers have extended during the war. After Oct. 7, the IDF called up nearly 300,000 reservists, who have served in multiple stints totalling 136 days per year on average. While the IDF experienced an unprecedented 120% turnout rate for reservists on Oct. 7, current participation is less than half that, according to Zamir's office. The decline stems from exhaustion and economic hardship after months of repeated call-ups, anger over haredi draft exemptions, and a loss of trust in the government, especially as officials have said returning the remaining 58 hostages is not the war's top goal. Signs of a crisis are mounting: Last week, a Knesset committee voted to extend the government's right to call up reservists, over the objection of opposition lawmakers who said the government should do more to conscript haredi soldiers before pressing others back into service. In recent days, two reservists in an advocacy group called Soldiers for Hostages — one who spent 110 days in uniform since Oct. 7, another who had reported for 270 days of duty — were sentenced to military prison for refusing to serve in what one called 'a never-ending war.' And a report found that reservists are being called up despite mental health issues that should make them ineligible for service. According to data released in March by the Defense Ministry, an outsized portion of the wounded since the war began — 66% — are reservists, approximately half of whom are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Ministry officials are anticipating that number to rise significantly as more cases are diagnosed. Tal Zalcman is one of the reservists who has newly reported for duty. Immediately after Oct. 7, his Air Force squadron was deployed to Israel's northern border. The site where he was first posted was struck by Hezbollah rockets. Soon, he found himself feeling anxious and depressed – a departure from his positive mental state before Oct. 7. 'Everyone around me was so shaken, but I just shut off,' he recalled. 'I stopped thinking about anything that went beyond the next technical task of guard duty, patrols, coordination.' After being released from his first stint in the reserves, Zalcman returned to his teaching job at a high school in Ramat Gan — a decision he now says was a mistake, given the acute mental state he was in at the time, with the onset of panic attacks for the first time in his life. After finishing the year, he realized he needed to make a change. When the school year began in 2024, he was not in the classroom. His experience was not unique. A survey by Israel's national employment service released in March found that 41% of reservists who served after Oct. 7 said they had been fired or otherwise left their jobs after returning to civilian life. The frequent churn of workers has strained workplaces and the economy, with watchdogs warning that the expansion of the war could unleash severe economic damage. The back-and-forth has also affected the many reservists who are university students, interrupting their studies and potentially setting them back. Eitan Shamir, former head of the national security doctrine department at Israel's Strategic Affairs ministry, now directs the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. He said faculty and administrators had begun recording lectures and softened attendance policies to account for students who were called into service. 'Every lecturer takes personal responsibility to ease the burden on reservists,' he said. But he noted that while digital tools have improved access across many departments, some fields — such as medicine and engineering, where in-person training is a must — have been hit especially hard, with students falling behind in ways that may be almost impossible to recover from. As for Zalcman, leaving the classroom did not ease his depression, which worsened over time. He moved to a therapy farm in the central Israeli community of Nir Tzvi, then, at the urging of friends, traveled to Thailand. A few months later, he found himself in Koh Phangan, at a retreat called David's Circle, a loosely structured healing space frequented by reservists and survivors of the Nova music festival. The island, known for its mix of hedonism and healing, offered a cocktail of ice baths, psychedelic ceremonies, and easy access to recreational drugs. Still searching for relief, Zalcman, who had already trained as a yoga teacher, enrolled in a monk ordination program at a Buddhist monastery. But after being forced to shave his head, relinquish his tefillin, and bow before the Buddha and the senior monk, something in him broke. 'Everyone around me seemed happy, but I felt like I was in a cult,' he said. He left the program halfway through. Since returning to Israel Zalcman began planning what he hopes will be a first-of-its-kind retreat center: a men-only space for current and former reservists, offering overnight lodging and a program focused on yoga, meditation, and other forms of alternative healing. 'There are only two options for how you come out of this,' he said, referring to reservist service in wartime. 'Either you're in trauma or post-trauma and are therefore in treatment, or you're the one administering the treatment.' But first, he is in Gaza as one of tens of thousands of soldiers flowing into the enclave to fight in Israel's expanded offensive. 'In part, I returned to Israel for the reserves,' he said. 'You go because they call, because it's your duty.' For Schloss, too, there is no question about whether he will report for his reserve duties, even though he has a growing family and some others are declining to return to service over time. 'There's a fine line between fighting for a normal life and encouraging people not to show up,' he said. 'We can't afford to cross it.' But those who do not serve weigh on his mind. For him and many other Israelis, the latest call-ups have underscored how unfair it is that haredi Orthodox Jews are not required to serve. Last year, amid intensifying tensions over who serves, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the haredi draft exemption in place for decades was illegal. Tens of thousands of haredi young men have been called up, but only a small fraction have reported to induction centers and others have joined street protests against conscription. Those who have dodged the draft are subject to penalties, though the military's strained resources, coming alongside Netanyahu's close alliance with haredi political parties, have meant that few have been prosecuted. Still, the issue may end up collapsing Netanyahu's coalition: Haredi politicians have demanded progress on a law formalizing the draft exemption by the holiday of Shavuot, which begins Sunday evening. Otherwise, they have threatened to leave the government, which could deprive the prime minister of a majority. For Schloss, who describes himself as right-wing ideologically but not a supporter of the current government, the crisis around haredi enlistment is particularly painful given the upheaval in his own life. 'If the threat is so enormous that you have no choice but to draft someone for 100 days with a week's notice, then it's time to take other steps,' Schloss said. 'One step would be to stop funding haredi institutions altogether. To cut 100 million [shekels], or even 400 million. That's not ethical? Or it's undemocratic? Maybe. But so is tearing people from their lives for 100 days.' Shamir noted that the current war — a prolonged, multi-front conflict involving non-state actors, regional powers, and global superpowers — is fundamentally different in character than all those that preceded it. Unlike the short, decisive campaigns of the past, he said, this is a war of attrition that tests the stamina of both the military and the civilian population. 'It demands long-term resilience and endurance from the home front, not just from those serving on the front lines,' he said. Many of the reservists are married, with young children. Reservists' wives have emerged as a political constituency in the war, successfully advocating for a 9 billion shekel (roughly $2.5 billion) pot of government funds for the families of deployed soldiers and for policies to otherwise support them. A year ago, under pressure from the constituency, the Knesset passed a law barring employers from firing or placing on unpaid leave the spouses of active-duty reservists, blunting one trauma that had played out for some families since the war's start. But many other challenges have remained. A recent survey by the Reservists' Wives Forum, which began as an informal Facebook group early in the war and now employs dozens of attorneys working on behalf of families, found that more than half of women with deployed husbands had to cut back on working to compensate for their husbands' absences despite the protections. In the Facebook group, wives share stories of domestic violence, traumatized children, depressed husbands and financial crises. Last fall, a different survey by the organization, which now advocates for the conscription of haredi Israelis, found that virtually all reservists' wives said their husbands' service had induced emotional harm — 37% to 'a very great degree.' 'The emotional part is the hardest and unfortunately, this is also the hardest thing for decision-makers to understand,' Sapir Bluzer, one of the group's co-founders, said on the 'Israel Story' podcast last year. 'It's much easier to explain to a person like … someone who works in the Treasury Office how it affects our career, than how it affects emotionally our families.' Kaley Halperin, an American-Israeli musician living in Jaffa, is one of the hundreds of thousands of Israeli women whose husbands reported for service on Oct. 7. She spent the first months of the war raising her four children alone while her husband Yoni, a commanding officer in the paratroopers, was deployed to Gaza. Since then, he has spent more than 200 days in the reserves, inducing turmoil in his work in the tech sector and at home. In an interview in November 2023, Halperin recalled that during the early days of his service, Yoni didn't want to see his family — even when it was permitted — because, despite missing them deeply, he feared it would weaken his resolve. 'He said he was working on hardening his heart,' she said at the time. 'I told him, 'This war is for peace. You have to remember that.'' A year and a half later, Halperin said she's come to understand how unsustainable that kind of emotional detachment really is. 'Some people go into this with a deep sense of mission — of serving their team, their country, of doing something bigger than themselves,' she said. 'But over time, that can blur into something else. It can make it easier to dehumanize the other side. I believe there has to be a space between committing war crimes and being killed. I pray we're still in that space.' The strain of prolonged service seeped into her marriage, exposing differences in parenting styles and worldviews. 'Like in many families, it surfaced things that were already simmering,' she said. The couple decided to separate. Yoni has been called back into the reserves for another stint starting in July. He hasn't fully decided whether to report for duty. 'I feel I've paid too high a price. I've lost money and business clients, and also paid a price with my family,' he said. 'And also the mission itself isn't clear to me. I'm not connected to it. I'm not sure what we're doing there, except for dragging our feet. We destroy some houses, we're killing terrorists, it's not clear to me at all.' He added, 'The combination of all fronts — my business, my home, my family, my personal experiences, my time, and my money — is too much.'
Yomiuri Shimbun
an hour ago
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Four Palestinians Die in Storming of UN Food Warehouse a Day after Gunfire at New Gaza Aid Site
The Associated Press Palestinians storming a U.N. World Food Program warehouse and carry bags of flour in Zawaida, Central Gaza Strip, on Wednesday, May 28, 2025. DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hundreds of Palestinians stormed a United Nations food warehouse Wednesday in Gaza in a desperate attempt to get something to eat, shouting and shoving each other and ripping off pieces of the building to get inside. Four people died in the chaos, hospital officials said. The deaths came a day after a crowd was fired upon while overrunning a new aid-distribution sitein Gaza set up by an Israeli and U.S.-backed foundation, killing at least one Palestinian and wounding 48 others, Gaza's Health Ministry said. The Israeli military, which guards the site from a distance, said it fired only warning shots to control the situation. The foundation said its military contractors guarding the site did not open fire. A Red Cross field hospital said the 48 people wounded suffered gunshot wounds, including women and children. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country killed senior Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar, the brother of Yahya Sinwar, one of the masterminds of the militant group's Oct. 7, 2023, attack, who was killed by Israeli forces last year. Speaking before parliament, Netanyahu included Mohammed Sinwar in a list of Hamas leaders killed by Israeli forces, apparently confirming his death in a recent airstrike in Gaza. In other developments, Israel carried out airstrikes on the international airport in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, destroying the last plane belonging to the country's flagship airline. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said it was the last plane used by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. It was not immediately clear if anyone was killed or wounded in the strikes, which came after Houthi rebels fired several missiles at Israel in recent days, without causing casualties. The Israeli-backed distribution hub outside Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah was opened Monday by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been slated by Israel to take over aid operations. The crowd of Palestinians broke through fences Tuesday around the distribution site where thousands had gathered. An Associated Press journalist heard Israeli tank and gunfire and saw a military helicopter firing flares. The U.N. and other humanitarian organizations have rejected the new aid system, saying it will not be able to feed Gaza's 2.3 million people and that it lets Israel use food to control the population. They have also warned of the risk of friction between Israeli troops and people seeking supplies. Four dead as crowd storms warehouse holding U.N. aid Palestinians burst into the U.N.'s World Food Program warehouse Wednesday in central Gaza. Two people were fatally crushed in the crowd, while two others died of gunshot wounds, officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said. Scores of aid-seekers could be seen carrying large bags of flour as they fought their way back out into the sunlight through throngs of people pressing to get inside. Each bag of flour weighs around 25 kilograms (55 pounds). A United Nations envoy compared the limited aid being allowed into Gaza to 'a lifeboat after the ship has sunk.' Sigrid Kaag, acting U.N. special coordinator for the Mideast, told the U.N. Security Council that people facing famine in Gaza 'have lost hope.' 'Instead of saying 'goodbye,' Palestinians in Gaza now say, 'See you in heaven,'' Kaag said. The World Food Program said 'humanitarian needs have spiraled out of control' after Israel's long blockade of supplies entering Gaza, which began in early March to pressure Hamas. The Palestinian ambassador to the U.N. broke down as he spoke of the 1,300 children killed and 4,000 wounded since Israel ended the latest ceasefire in March, and of mothers seen 'embracing their motionless bodies, caressing their hair, talking to them, apologizing to them.' 'If this is civilized,' Riyad Mansour said, 'what is barbarism?' Wael Tabsh, a displaced man from the city of Khan Younis, urged world leaders to help end the war. 'How long will this torture last?' he asked. Violence erupted soon after new hub opened Palestinians are desperate for food after nearly three months of Israeli border closures have pushed Gaza to the brink of famine. Israel says it helped establish the new aid mechanism to prevent Hamas from siphoning off supplies, but it has provided no evidence of systematic diversion, and U.N. agencies say they have mechanisms in place to prevent it while delivering aid to all parts of the territory. GHF says it has established four hubs, two of which have begun operating in the now mostly uninhabited Rafah. It said around eight truckloads of aid were distributed at the hubs on Wednesday without incident. About 600 trucks entered Gaza every day during the ceasefire earlier this year. The GHF sites are guarded by private security contractors and have chain-link fences channeling Palestinians into a what resemble military bases surrounded by large sand berms. Israeli forces are stationed nearby in a military zone separating Rafah from the rest of the territory. The U.N. and other aid groups have refused to participate in GHF's system, saying it violates humanitarian principles. They say it can be used by Israel to forcibly displace the population by requiring them to move near the few distribution hubs or else face starvation, a violation of international law. Netanyahu said Tuesday there was only a brief 'loss of control' at the site. He repeated that Israel plans to move Gaza's entire population to a 'sterile zone' at the southern end of the territory while troops fight Hamas elsewhere. Netanyahu has also vowed to facilitate what he refers to as the voluntary emigration of much of Gaza's population to other countries, a plan that Palestinians and many others view as forcible expulsion. Israel says it destroyed the Houthis' last plane The Israeli strikes on the main airport in Yemen destroyed the last plane belonging to the country's flagship carrier, Yemenia, according to the airport. The airline did not say if anyone was wounded. Yemenia had a total of four registered aircraft, according to the plane-tracking website FlightRadar24. Israel destroyed three in a May 6 airstrike on the airport that also riddled the runway with craters. Houthi-backed Yemeni President Mahdi al-Mashat visited the airport Wednesday and said his group 'will not back down' from its support of people in Gaza until the siege ends, according to SABA Yemen News Agency. The Houthis have targeted Israel throughout the war in Gaza in solidarity with Palestinians, raising their profile at home and internationally as the last member of Iran's self-described 'Axis of Resistance' capable of launching regular attacks on Israel. The Houthi missiles have mostly been intercepted, although some have penetrated Israel's missile defense systems, causing casualties and damage. Israel has frequently struck back, especially around the vital Hodeida port. The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel in the Oct. 7 attack, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Hamas still holds 58 hostages, around a third of them believed to be alive. Most of the rest were released in ceasefire deals or other agreements. Israeli forces have rescued eight and recovered dozens of bodies. Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed over 54,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The ministry says women and children make up most of the dead, but it does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tally.
AsiaOne
an hour ago
- Politics
- AsiaOne
Pope Leo appeals for Gaza ceasefire, laments deaths of children, World News
VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo appealed on Wednesday (May 28) for a ceasefire in Gaza and called on Israel and Hamas militants to completely respect international humanitarian law. "In the Gaza Strip, the intense cries are reaching Heaven more and more from mothers and fathers who hold tightly to the bodies of their dead children," the pontiff said during his weekly general audience in St Peter's Square. "To those responsible, I renew my appeal: stop the fighting," said the pope. "Liberate all the hostages. Completely respect humanitarian law." Leo, elected on May 8 to replace the late Pope Francis, also appealed for an end to the war in Ukraine. The pope decried new attacks against civilians and infrastructure in Ukraine in the days since Russia launched the biggest aerial attack of the three-year war. "I renew with vigour my appeal to stop the war and to support every initiative of dialogue and peace," said Leo. The pope's two appeals, made in Italian, came at the end of his audience, when he added some brief comments to his prepared text. Thousands of Palestinians rushed an aid distribution site in Gaza on Tuesday, after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the war-devastated enclave. Israel imposed the blockade on aid supplies in March, accusing Hamas of seizing supplies meant for civilians, a charge Hamas denies. Francis, who died on April 21, had been ramping up criticism of Israel's military campaign in Gaza in the months before his death. Leo, who celebrates three weeks as pope on Thursday, has now mentioned the conflict several times. In his first general audience, held last week, he called on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. On Wednesday, the pope also said parents in the enclave "are continuously forced to search for a bit of food and a place safer from the bombing". Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023 that killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 hostages abducted into Gaza. Its assault has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians and reduced much of the crowded coastal enclave to rubble. [[nid:718231]]
NBC News
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- NBC News
The internet thinks this video from Gaza is AI. Here's how we proved it isn't
New video posted to social media from southern Gaza became the center of a heated internet debate about whether it was generated using artificial intelligence. The video, which started circulating Tuesday, shows a person in a camouflage-print face covering and baseball cap making a heart sign and a 'shaka' sign with their hands in front of a large crowd of Palestinians gathered along rows of fences, waiting for food aid at the Tal as Sultan distribution site in Rafah. A combined analysis from NBC News and Get Real Security, a cybersecurity company that specializes in detecting generative AI, found no evidence of AI generation or manipulation in the video. NBC News geolocated the video to inside the Tal as Sultan aid distribution site, recently constructed by Israel's civilian policy unit — the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) — in partnership with the Gazan Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The chief spokesperson for the GHF confirmed with NBC News that this video was originally distributed by their team but could not confirm the identity of the person in the video. 'Any claim that our documentation is fake or generated by AI is false and irresponsible,' the foundation said in a statement. Satellite imagery from Planet Labs and drone footage taken by the Israeli military show the same row of light poles and lines of fencing in the video. Additional collapsed structures and foliage rise behind and between the poles across a dirt lot in the direction of the Mediterranean Sea. Shortly after the video was posted to X, users began fighting in the comments about its authenticity. 'This video is AI generated,' one user wrote. 'Nothing can be believed because it could just as easily have been AI generated.' 'I am not seeing any obvious signs that this video is AI-generated,' Hany Farid, co-founder of Get Real Security and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told NBC News. 'We see strong continuity in features as the camera pans back and forth, something that generative AI struggles with,' Farid said, noting specific details like the crisp 'Ray Ban' logo on the side of the sunglasses worn by the person sporting the baseball cap, as well as the consistency of the shadows made by various objects in the video. Farid noted that the audio track appears to be consistent with what's shown in the video itself — down to the sound of the wind and someone saying in English, 'Isn't that crazy? Look at that.' A reverse image search revealed that the person making gestures to the crowd was wearing a pair of Oakley S.I. gloves, which have been seen worn by U.S. contractors in Gaza as recently as January.
